Utilities in states with regulatory renewable energy mandates are suddenly turning to geothermal power to comply with mandated goals for renewables usage.
Washington, D.C. (April 13, 2010) – The US geothermal power industry continued strong growth in 2009, according to a new report by the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA). The April 2010 US Geothermal Power Production and Development Update showed 26% growth in new projects under development in the United States in the past year, with 188 projects underway in 15 states which could produce as much as 7,875 MW of new electric power.
When completed, these projects will add over 7,000 MW of baseload power capacity; enough to provide electricity for 7.6 million people, or 20% of California’s total power needs, and roughly equivalent to the total power used in California from coal-fired power plants. "Geothermal power can be a critical part of the answer to global warming," according to GEA's Executive Director, Karl Gawell. "For example, California could achieve its 2020 goal for global warming emissions reductions just by keeping energy demand level and replacing its coal-fired generation with geothermal," he asserted.
Nevada continued to be the leading state for new geothermal energy, with over 3,000 MW under development. The fastest growing geothermal power states were Utah which quadrupled its geothermal power under development, New Mexico which tripled, Idaho which doubled, and Oregon which reported a 50% increase. In addition, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas all reported their first geothermal projects compared with a year earlier.
For states that do not have good geothermal or wind fulfillment of renewables mandates has got to be tough (meaning expensive). I am wondering what the costs for these geothermal plants turn out to be. One can't predict the costs just from initial construction costs because the drilled pipes to the deep hot areas can clog up and also the heat can not last. So redrilling can become necessary and so geothermal's cost can vary.
Geothermal has one big advantage over solar and wind: 24x7 operation.
Update: The costs of renewables are endlessly debated. But how the market responds to the state renewables requirements gives us a window into their relative costs. From the sizes of these projects it looks like geothermal is cheaper than wind and solar in some areas. As near as I can tell all renewables in the United States are eligible for the same 2.1 cents/kwh production tax credit. So geothermal, wind, and solar are competing on a level playing field - at least at the federal level.
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2010 April 26 12:44 AM Energy Geothermal |
The EIA's estimates have geothermal very close to coal and nuclear in price, significantly cheaper than wind or solar.
Of course, there have been those pesky tremors that may or may not be associated.
24x7 operation is a big plus, the variability of wind and solar is a big headache, and entails serious additional expense to cope with it. The cheapest way to cope is to build natural gas turbine capacity to carry the entire load when wind or solar isn't producing.
I'm sure most people are unfamiliar with the particulars involved in using geothermal for generating electricity, but the plant operations are hideously expensive due to the very nasty stuff that comes out of the ground. The alloys used for pipes and valves are not something they keep on shelves somewhere and the abatement of the material coming out of the ground is nothing to sneeze at. My point being, if word gets out, NIMDY will be the same as for just about all other generating platforms. I'm certainly not against using it, just a heads up. I believe Mr. Den Beste wrote about there being no panacea as far as choices in power geneation.
I wonder if they can take credit for use of heat pumps in home HVAC systems?
Geothermal does have room for expansion in certain states. The costs and operational capabilities are certainly FAR better than wind or solar though the plants tend to be stinky things. They require lots of pollution abatement hardware too.
Here in California, there has been big battles over transmission access since geothermal power has to be built at the resource. The state's wind and solar interests lobbied for preference to the available transmission capability and got it.
One suspects that wind and solar got preference because they are such useless technologies and geothermal at least works.
Nuclear, Nuclear and more nuclear. That is if you want to get serious obout energy production.
What's the cost (including subsidies)? Per KWH.
I am in the upstate of SC. All my power is from Nuclear and Hydro. My cost per KWH is 10.76 Cents. Clean energy compared to the North East while they are paying almost double what I pay.
Installing geothermal systems in homes and businesses would also be a great way to improve energy efficiency too. Almost every home North America could benefit from installing a low temperature geothermal heat pumps for winter heating or air conditioning too. They are between double and triple the cost of a traditional high efficiency natural gas furnace and air conditioning combo to install but the energy saving are so great in most provinces or states that they pay for the difference in five to seven years. They make particular sense for new construction. It would be relatively simple for developers to install geothermal lines when putting in water and sewer services in new subdivisions so it would be possible for home owners to install geothermal heat pump systems for little extra cost at all Manitoba hydro had a study out several years ago that said if all 100,000 homes in that Canadian province with electric heat switched to geothermal it would be like adding another big hydro dam to the grid.
"My cost per KWH is 10.76 Cents"
What a deal!
Here in Northern California, the residential rates top out at 43 cents per kW-hr for the top tier of consumption.
And out utility brags about having one of the lowest carbon footprints in the country, mostly thanks to hydro built in the early 20th century, a nuclear plant completed in 1984, and natural gas from Canada.
Unfortunately, ground source heat pumps have a huge first cost disadvantage. If one had a pond or flowing creek on their property, it could lower the capital costs.
California brags it's at 20% renewable power generation and 30% is the next goal, the breakdown ... http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html looks like sun and wind still are as the danes say, a disaster, yep, just as parker says, more geothermal is whats needed.
43 cents per KWH, whats a few pennies here or there to help clean up the world, as joe biden said, "come on, get in the game."
I'm paying about 8 cents all year round, day or night, you get what you vote for.
Global warming is poppycock and geothermal is a waste of poor people's money.
If it's worth doing, some entrepreneur or syndicate would do it. Government subsidies do nothing but rob Peter and Paul alike, generally to the advantage of a peculating Al Gore type raking off tax premiums for inefficiency. When one realizes that France and Japan, for starters, have derived 60 - 80% of their national energy needs from non-polluting, rock-solid nuclear facilities for fifty years, eco-mongers' opposition to critically necessary development exposes them for the death-eating Luddite sociopaths they are.
if one could bring laser drilling online quickly, it could reduce the cost of residential and business geothermal by 40% simply by dropping the cost of drilling the holes. Anyone have any insights/updates on that? If the hole problem could be solved, geothermal would be instantly cost competitive with air/air heat pumps even without tax incentives.
EIA report on US Energy subsidies.
Geothermal makes a lot of sense, in some locations. Iceland, for instance, were it's near at hand. Hawaii, probably, for the same reason. Indonesia is going to try and tap their volcanic areas.
But if you don't have a near surface hot spot, then you have to drill down deep, make or find hot fractured rock, and pump water down. Besides being expensive, this has been associated with tremors, causing two projects to shut down.
LarryD,
Interesting report on the subsidies. I'd like to see numbers for FY 2009 and projected numbers for FY 2010. Wind installations have surged and the yearly tax subsidy cost for nukes has got to be a couple of billion dollars by now. If the subsidies remain in place and wind grows by another order of magnitude then the costs would become substantial.
David Gobel.
Laser drills? I would expect very high energy intensity. Why would that be less energy consumptive than conventional mechanical drills?
Laser drilling either shatters, melts or vaporizes the rock. This is very energy-intensive. Water jets are much more efficient; they remove rock as whole grains, which involves a lot less surface energy and can go a lot faster (much less waste heat to remove from the working surface). If you can just break up a small annulus and remove the rest as solid cores, so much the better. See the recent feature post on water jets on The Oil Drum for details.
I wonder if geothermal power isn't a good complement to wind. The hot-rock resource depletes slowly, but if the flow rate can be varied over the short term without affecting the temperature much, the geothermal could be used as peaking generation instead of base load. That would let it command a higher price than the wind energy competing for access to the same lines.
E-P,
I would guess that geothermal is like nuclear and wind: you can reduce it's output below it's rated level, but you'd never want to, because the fuel is free (or very cheap) and marginal generation cost is very low.
I think Demand Side Management is really the very cheapest and most effective way to handle the net wind variance remaining after you take advantage of geographically distributed wind sites to reduce variance. That will suffice to handle market penetration up to at least 30% of KWHs, and probably 40%.
Unlike wind, geothermal heat will still be there if you leave it for a few hours. The question is, what's the transient response (pressure and temperature) of typical geothermal reservoirs to flow variations? If under-pumping them for a while lets you over-pump them a similar amount later and still get the same output quality, you have a much more valuable system.
No question that DSM has huge potential, but it's not an answer to line congestion between different renewables.
If under-pumping them for a while lets you over-pump them a similar amount later and still get the same output quality, you have a much more valuable system.
Unlike wind, you don't have to overbuild your generator to maximize output, so the cost of overbuilding would have to be paid for by the value of the extra capacity factor. It might make sense, but I'm pretty sure that would be a big conceptual shift from present designs. It's certainly an interesting idea for further research. I wonder if current geothermal is limited by the resource's heat flow, or by capex?
DSM has huge potential, but it's not an answer to line congestion between different renewables.
Could you expand on that? I'm not clear what you mean.
Randall - I do not know the laser drill energy consumption. What I know is that it costs about 15k to drill holes to set up a residential geothermal system which makes it uneconomic compared to air-2-air systems. A laser drill would reduce LABOR costs and size/scale/permits required for equipment. See this link for laser drill rationale.
Could you expand on that?This commenter claimed that wind and solar got preferential access to transmission, ahead of geothermal. If wind gets first dibs on a line without the capacity to carry all connected RE, geothermal would have to shut down when the wind is good.
Ah, thanks.
Well that looks like a temporary, local problem. It's striking that Joseph telegraphs his prejudice against wind and solar.